YPF – Intros

“Young People Fucking” Directed by Martin Gero

The film’s opening scenes that set up all 5 story lines. Here is a truncated version.

Young People Fucking, also called Y.P.F., is a romantic comedy directed, written and produced by Martin Gero and Aaron Abrams. It debuted at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. “Our generation makes an effort to separate love and sex,” says Gero. “They’re all trying to do this thing, and they’re all failing miserably … we’re saying, ‘Listen, people our age. This is really hard to do without being emotionally involved.'”

From an editing perspective this was an amazing process. I was completely removed from the shoot by cutting in Vancouver while it was filmed in Toronto. Each of the five stand-alone story lines were shot individually over a week each. So I had the luxury of editing each segment separately then we dovetailed them together after they were complete. It was like merging 5 separate movies. Because none of the narratives intersected, the placements of the inter-cuts was a constantly evolving process. This allowed Martin, Aaron, Steve Hoban and I a great deal of creative freedom to restructure and have fun with the pieces in the cutting room.

The film was at the center of a Canadian political controversy in 2006. The Canadian federal government enacted Bill C-10, allowing the government to retroactively strip tax credits from films deemed “offensive or not in the public interest” by the Heritage Minister. A special screening was held in Ottawa, which was well attended by opposition Members of Parliament, although no MP’s from the governing Conservative Party attended. Ultimately the film was instrumental in the striking down of the bill.